Coming This Fall: The Romanovs Visit Newark

By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO

Published: September 5, 2004

WHILE politics will be center stage in New Jersey this fall, many necessary diversions await in the art museums as the new season begins. The offerings include snazzy touring exhibitions, chancy curatorial endeavors and an informal focus on grass-roots, up-and-coming contemporary artists. This is all glad news for art lovers.

The season's marquee exhibit is a touring cache of Romanov baubles at the Newark Museum. Americans love royalty, and this collection of Russian imperial knickknacks, including works by Faberg?should be a smash. It also ties in nicely with a Russian photography exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick.

Elsewhere, worth noting is the depth, richness and diversity of contemporary art exhibitions throughout the state. The spotlight of the moment belongs to ''jersey (new),'' a brash, zappy survey of the state's emerging and lesser-known artists at the Jersey City Museum. We need more of these hearty, full-blooded surveys.

We also need more gutsy curatorial efforts, like the Montclair Art Museum's survey of the talented if forgotten modernist Jan Matulka. Lately, some of our museums have become too corporate and gate-fixated, their exhibition programs seemingly commercially -- not aesthetically -- driven.

Despite the sluggish economy, a handful of museums are also building. The New Jersey Center for Visual Arts in Summit has begun a $5.6 million expansion, while Aljira in Newark is set to double its exhibition space by late next year. The main building at the State Museum in Trenton is also closed for remodeling.

Money and ambition are also in evidence at the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts down in Long Branch, the state's newest art center. Beyond the story line of its spring opening, it has been getting attention with its bold program. Already it has attracted a coterie of Shore artists, savvy patrons and appreciative fans.

Twelve months ago the larger public museums were in the doldrums, facing state budget cuts to the arts and soft corporate contributions. To survive, many were forced to trim programs and hastily assemble collection shows. Unexpectedly, the outcome was a celebration of great artworks often left in the shadows.

This year many museums are again presenting exhibitions of valuable collection material. The highlight is a selection of the Princeton University Art Museum's renowned collection of American drawings and watercolors, which will tour nationally, and then travel on to Giverny, in France, where it will stay through 2005. Catch it before it flies.

Here is a sampling of what's being offered in New Jersey's museums this season.

Newark Museum

Touching down at this museum is the fall's most captivating, intensely delightful exhibition. ''Nicholas and Alexandra: At Home with the Last Tsar and His Family'' offers peasants (and New Jerseyans) a rare chance to gawk at the dizzying riches of Russia's last imperial dynasty. The lavish spread offers up some 250 of the Romanov family's belongings from their living quarters in the Alexander Palace, outside St. Petersburg. The show opens Sept. 29.

This is the first time many of these objects have left Russia. Among the treasures are a Faberg?ecorative basket, and the Marie Antoinette Gobelin tapestry presented by the president of France to Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra.

For more information: (973)596-6550 or www.newarkmuseum.org.

Zimmerli Art Museum

In keeping with its well-known focus on Russian and Soviet-era art, this museum is presenting ''Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art.'' The show, guest-curated by Diane Neumaier, a Rutgers art professor, and opening Sept. 18, examines the varied and often resourceful uses of photography in the unofficial art of the Soviet era.

In addition, the museum has plucked from storage more than 40 of its rarely seen, turn-of-the-century French pastels. ''Pastels in Paris,'' which is already open, looks at the uses of pastels by late-19th-century French avant-garde artists. Included are pastels by many well-known artists, as well as some lesser-known figures who were nonetheless once highly regarded.

For more information: (732)932-7237 or www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu.

Grounds for Sculpture

Things are lively here, where the renowned sculptor Patrick Dougherty will create one of his monumental tree sculptures inside the museum building. The sculpture, ''Twisted Logic,'' will consist of a large organic form made from thousands of tightly woven tree saplings. The sculpture will be available for viewing starting Oct. 10.

Aside from being dazzlingly beautiful, Mr. Dougherty's sculptures are also devilishly clever. He uses the natural grab and snagging properties of the branches to thread and weave them into a tightly bound structure. Leading up to the opening, visitors will be able to see the work in progress and meet the artist.

For more information: (609)586-0616 or www.groundsforsculpture.org.

Jersey City Museum

This museum is one of the state's dynamic contemporary art spaces. Through the fall it is offering ''jersey (new),'' a smorgasbord of emerging and lesser-known artists from five New Jersey counties. There is no overall theme, though the works emphasize the importance that questions of place and identity continue to play in the lives of artists living and working here. The show opened this past week.

To complement the exhibition, the museum plans to post an online catalog with artist interviews by the curators, Pamela Ford and Roc?Aranda-Alvarado; images of artwork from the exhibition; and images of the artists in their studios. The site will open in November.

For more information: (201)413-0303 or www.jerseycitymuseum.org.

Montclair Art Museum

One of the season's worthiest exhibitions is ''Jan Matulka: The Global Modernist,'' a retrospective of the work of this forgotten, early-20th-century Czech-American modernist. Drawn from the artist's estate, private and public collections, it includes 66 paintings, drawings, prints and illustrations produced between 1916 and 1950, some of them inspired by American Indian art. Opening Sept. 19, the exhibition will tour to a dozen spaces during the next two years.

Alongside this exhibition, the museum will present works from its collection by other early-20th-century American artists inspired by American Indian art forms and symbols. Among the pieces in the show, ''Indian Space Works From the Montclair Art Museum's Permanent Collection,'' are works by Will Barnet, Peter Busa, Richard Pousette-Dart, Steve Wheeler and Howard Daum.

Fore more information: (973)746-5555 or www.montclair-art.com.

Princeton University Art Museum

Organized by the Princeton art historian John Wilmerding, with Laura M. Giles, curator of prints and drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, ''West to Wesselmann: American Drawings and Watercolors in the Princeton University Art Museum,'' opening Oct. 16, features 77 works on paper by American artists from the 18th through the 20th centuries. All works are from the museum's acclaimed collection of American drawings and watercolors.

The exhibition shows off the depth, range and quality of the collection. Highlights include a group of early landscape drawings by artists of the Hudson River School, fine watercolors by Homer, Eakins, Sargent and La Farge, and a positively dreamy O'Keeffe pastel. There are also excellent pieces by artists of the Ash Can School, Stieglitz circle and a bevy of Pop and Abstract Expressionist painters.

For more information: (609)258-3788 or www.princetonartmuseum.org.

Photos: The treasures of Czar Nicholas and his family will be on display at the Newark Museum in the ''Nicholas and Alexandra'' exhibit.; Yoko Motomiya's ''Plastic Notes,'' from ''jersey (new),'' the Jersey City Museum.; Clockwise from left, Georgia O'Keeffe's ''Narcissa's Last Orchid'' will be at Princeton University Art Museum, a tree sculpture by Patrick Dougherty will be at Grounds for Sculpture, and Edward Hopper's ''Universalist Church'' will also be in Princeton. (Photo by State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow)